UFC champ Jones: I haven't cleaned out the division, but Sonnen 'is a joke'

If you want to know how dominant Jon Jones has been as UFC light-heavyweight champ, consider for a moment that, even with a title defense against a legend of the sport slated for UFC 151 a couple weeks from now, the big story recently has been the argument over whom Jones will fight next.

As in, after he beats Dan Henderson on Sept. 1, and after he wins a fight that is by no means a gimme, regardless of how many fans and pundits dismiss it as a mere formality.

And sure, you can insert your own sports cliche here about how he’s not looking past Henderson, about how the only fight that matters is the next one, and that’s all true. Still, that doesn’t mean the champ can’t have an opinion on what his future with the UFC should look like, as well as what it shouldn’t.

It’s just that, because of Jones’s reign of terror atop the weight class, new and interesting challenges in the light-heavyweight division are getting harder and harder to come by. Or, if you believe him, maybe they’re not.

First, a word of advice. If you happen to talk to Jones, as I did recently, don’t make the mistake of suggesting that, with a win over Henderson, he might clean out the 205-pound division. He has a rebuttal already prepared for that line of thinking, and it is a revealing one.

“Styles make these matchups,” Jones told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) when asked who might be left for him after Henderson. “Phil Davis lost to Rashad [Evans], and I beat Rashad. But that doesn’t mean Phil Davis won’t give me the fight of my life. Or [Alexander] Gustafsson. He’s tall, I’m tall, and he’s got long arms. Maybe that would be interesting to see. Or Glover Teixiera. He hits hard. Maybe that would be interesting. Styles make matchups. There’s guys in my gym right now that aren’t in the UFC that make me sweat and bleed. So you can’t say I’ve cleaned out the division – because I haven’t. I simply haven’t.”

You’ll notice that, in Jones’ list of interesting potential title challengers, two names are conspicuously absent. The first is Lyoto Machida, who’s already been promised a fight with the winner of the Jones-Henderson scrap despite the fact that Jones choked him unconscious less than a year ago. The second is brand new light heavyweight Chael Sonnen, who wasted no time trying to drum up a rivalry with Jones this past week after announcing that he was moving up from middleweight.

Neither fight is of particular interest to Jones, he explained, though for two very different reasons. For starters, take Machida, who Jones described as both a “great challenge” and a “tricky puzzle” from a pure martial arts perspective.

“But as a businessman, the [fight against Machida at UFC 140] had the lowest pay-per-view sales of all the fights I had in 2011,” Jones said. “So it’s just like, I don’t see why it would benefit me to fight him again. … I have nothing to gain there. I beat him once, and it was the lowest pay-per-view numbers I had the whole year. So why would I fight someone that no one really wants to see when there’s all these other guys working their hearts out to get a chance at me? Why do they get skipped [by] a guy who lost already?”

You have to admit that there is a certain unassailable logic at work here. If the goal of a champion is to defend his belt against the challengers fans want to see him fight – and if fans vote with their wallets – then Machida is a bad choice. He also represents a test that Jones passed with flying colors back in December. Machida may have won a single round against Jones, but how motivating do we really expect that to be for one of the UFC’s most dominant champs? For Jones, fighting Machida again is like going back to take the SAT after getting a nearly perfect score the first time. There might be some room for improvement, but not much.

On the flip side, if it’s fan interest Jones is after, you might think he could do a lot worse than Sonnen. The former middleweight contender has yet to win a fight in the UFC at light heavyweight, but at least he knows how to sell a fight. He’s already begun laying the groundwork in his new weight class while taking potshots at Jones on a recent episode of “UFC Tonight” and drawing the champion’s ire on Twitter as a result.

But no, that fight isn’t happening either, according to Jones.

“That guy is a joke,” he said of Sonnen, adding that, regardless of how it may have appeared, he didn’t feel he’d been baited into a war of words when he responded on Twitter. “It’s not getting baited if you know what you’re up against. My emotions weren’t involved in that.”

And yet, the more Jones talks about Sonnen and what he stands for, the harder that is to believe. To hear Jones tell it, Sonnen is “a bully,” and there are few things the champion despises more. He insists that “bullying has taken over America, and it’s terrible for people.” Just look at Sonnen’s pre-fight rants about Anderson Silva and Brazilians in general, Jones said.

“He mentions Brazilian kids playing with dirt while American kids play with normal toys,” Jones said. “He talks about people’s parents and families and wives. He’s a bona fide bully. … The Brazilian thing, I lost a lot of respect for him. What he said was racist. It was disrespectful and unacceptable. I have a strong stance on this because I hate what he’s doing. You can’t just insult a whole country like that. … It was terrible. As Americans, we should have been embarrassed by what he did.”

But if Jones is so outraged by Sonnen’s schtick, one wonders, why then is he so opposed to the idea of fighting him? Wouldn’t the best response to a bully be a spinning back elbow to the skull?

Normally, maybe. But in this instance, it would be exactly what Sonnen’s after, and Jones knows it. Sonnen likely craves not only the attention of a high-profile feud, however contrived it might be, but also the money that would accompany a title fight. That is, if he could talk his way into one, which is where Jones comes in, or at least hopes to.

“It’s what he wants, but I’m not going to allow him to get a title fight from talking,” Jones said. “It’s not going to happen. Chael Sonnen will not get a title fight from using his mouth. I will make it very clear to everyone that there’s people who are way more deserving of a shot. If he wants to come into the [light-heavyweight division], I’d consider him Top 15 among light heavyweights. Let’s see what he’ll do against a wrestler like Phil Davis. Let’s see what he’d do against a wrestler like Rashad or a striker like Lyoto Machida. … The light-heavyweight division is a completely different beast. I won’t allow him to just jump the rankings with his mouth. It’s not going to happen.”

But then, that brings us back to the beginning. Jones has his own ideas about who deserves the next crack. It just seems like the UFC doesn’t share those sentiments. For now, at least, his future is clear. If he doesn’t get past Henderson, all the talk about who’s next for Jones will seem like a frivolous waste of time, maybe even a critical distraction. If the belt remains with its current owner after Sept. 1, however, the conversation will only get louder.

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